Shadow
by Heath07
Summary: Future fic. RyanTheresa, RyanAnna -Ryan got out of Chino...not everyone was that lucky.


Title: Shadow 

Author: Heath07

Rating: PG-13 -.

Feedback: Is appreciated. 

Summary: Future fic. Ryan/Theresa, Ryan/Anna -Ryan got out of Chino...not everyone was that lucky.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything pertaining to Fox's the O.C. etc...

______________________________

They called the accident spectacular on the news. Horrific. Horrendous. Those were words that made better sense. Spectacular seemed to imply something positive but there was nothing positive about being dead. 

The funeral was small. It rained that day. It seemed right, she had always liked the rain. Arturo asked him to be a pallbearer and he didn't hesitate in accepting. Ryan wasn't the guy from Chino he once had been, but he was willing to help out a friend one last time.

His shoulder ached the next day and when Sandy asked him if he was all right, he said he was fine. Later, when Kirsten checked in on him and asked him if he was okay, he said he was fine. When Seth stared at him across the supper table, afraid to speak, he told him he was fine. It was when Anna slipped into the pool house and knocked on the bathroom door and held out her hand, that he realized he wasn't fine and he told her so.

He had regrets. He wished he'd gotten to see her one last time. He wished he'd said he was sorry. He wished he could've said good-bye. He wished he could have said thanks.

_________

He visits her grave, sometimes. 

There's no need to tell her where he's going. From the tightness of Anna's mouth and the concern in her eyes, he knows she understands.

He can't feel guilty. Not for the life he's made. Not because he moved on. Not because he's happy. Because he has a wife and two little kids and one on the way and it's real. He always thought he would end up behind bars or in some rathole drinking away his paycheck while his cheating wife cursed his name, but that is not his life. Thank God, he thinks. 

He touches Anna's gently rounded stomach and smiles. 

It's a girl. 

They found out the week before last, even though they said they were going to wait and let it be a surprise. The boys are exited and so is Anna. Both the boys have his blue eyes -cornflower blue, Theresa used to say- and he's hoping this time the baby will inherit her mother's brown hue. 

___________

They'd grown up down the street from each other. Going through ups and downs. Theresa was there for him when his father got locked up. Ryan was there for her when her oldest brother caught a stray bullet and died on the street. When Ryan needed a place to crash, it was Theresa's bedroom floor he slept on. When he got into his first fight on the playground and then later got the shit beat out of him by his father's replacement, it was Theresa who cleaned up his wounds. 

And what did he give her in return? 

Nothing. 

He hadn't talked to Theresa in nearly two years to the day of the crash. He hadn't even called and he never returned her e-mails. He wanted to forget. Forget everything he once had been. Where he'd come from and what he would still be had Mr. Cohen not saved him. He was lucky.

Theresa had always been a good girl. The girl next door. She'd never gotten in any real trouble.

She didn't have a chance to be saved. 

Everyone told him how sorry they were. How sad it was and was there anything they could do?

He told them no, that he was okay. Day after day people still asked. 

Anna never did. 

She must have known that it wasn't what he wanted to hear, instead she listened to him breathe and rubbed his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek when she left. 

People tiptoed around him for weeks. It was strange. 

__________

Anna tells him she's going to name the baby Theresa and Ryan nods his head but doesn't say anything. 

He visits her grave the next day and shares the news. He thinks it would make Theresa happy. Theresa is a good name and his daughter will wear it proudly.

The grave looks lonely like Theresa sometimes looked when she was alive. It was how he always looked back in Chino and for the first year he lived in Newport. 

There was always something desperate in Theresa's eyes, though, like when the Cohen's decided to get a dog and had to give it back because of Seth's allergies. Seth looked ready to cry but a little bit relieved. 

Theresa looked like that the Thanksgiving he brought Marissa to Chino and they said good-bye on her front stoop. Her eyes had been so sad, but bright. Like she was about to get something, only to have it taken away before she really got a chance to think it was hers and maybe she realized she didn't want it anymore...

Because like the dog Seth had wanted, if he had kept it, he would have had to take a shit-load of medication everyday to stop from sneezing, he'd have to walk it and feed it and love it. If Ryan had stayed in Chino, Theresa knew what her life would have been; what Ryan's life would have been. She realized they were better than that. They deserved better. They always said, when they stayed up late talking about the future, that they wanted out of Chino...Ryan just so happened to get out first. 

If she had asked him to stay...

He doesn't want to think about it. Not really. Ryan isn't that guy from Chino anymore.

He's not sorry for having a life. 

He's not sorry it's with Anna.

__________

end.

  
  



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